Final green fling for Duchess of Sutherland

STANIER ‘Princess Coronation’ Pacific No. 46233 Duchess of Sutherland will see out the remainder of 2017 in the guise that several of its classmates carried in their final weeks in traffic during the autumn of 1964.

The Princess Royal Class Locomotive Trust has turned the loco out with the late version of the British Railways ‘ferret and dartboard’ crest on the tender, and a diagonal yellow stripe on the cabsides.

No. 46233 Duchess of Sutherland shows off its revised BR green livery as it passes Staveley, Derbyshire, with its support coach, bound for York on September 16. ROBERT FALCONER

These stripes were applied to surviving members of the class in September 1964 owing to them being banned from working beneath the new overhead wires south of Crewe.

No. 46233 was never adorned as such, having been withdrawn in the February of that year.

Over the course of the coming winter the ‘Sutherland’ will undergo a repaint back into red, but whether this is the LMS livery carried before as No. 6233, or the BR version as worn by No. 46229 Duchess of Hamilton for most of its post-preservation working career, remains to be seen.

Read more News and Features in October’s issue of The RM – on sale now!

Enjoy more of The Railway Magazine reading every month. Click here to subscribe.